This piece was reprinted by OpEd News with permission or license. It may not be reproduced in any form without permission or license from the source.
Paul JayYou talked before about there's more formal democracy in the United States than in Russia.
Aleksandr BuzgalinI said, maybe.
Paul JayNo, no, there is. And I actually think it's important to stress that there is, because the American people have fought to defend as much as they can certain amounts of this formal democracy. And it still does exist. It's less than at other times. Certainly Trump and his forces wanted to get rid of even the veneer of formal democracy. Trump wanted to get militarized, completely militarized, the police. He would have thrown protesters in prison for 10 years.
This is not to say the Democratic Party is not, did not also promote a certain militarization of the police. But at the level of certain cities and certain states, there is room. And the courts and the judicial system operates, to some extent.
I can't say it's fair, because there's inherently nothing fair about the whole system and the way it operates. But that level of formal democracy, there is still a judge here and a judge there will actually follow the Constitution, and a certain amount of due process does take place. We'll see with this Trump-appointed Supreme Court how much that lasts.
This election was relatively fair, at least in the counting process. Of course, there's nothing fair in the way money gets spent. But we'll see.
The Internet has changed the financial side, too. Bernie Sanders was raising as much or more money than a Hillary Clinton.
The place is in flux, and the elites are a little split, because a section of the elite is for the more Trumpian - and I don't want to individualize this too much, because this was just as true for Ronald Reagan as it was for Trump - for a much more coercive, more powerful state and suppress the left.
There's a reason why Trump had so much anti-socialist, so much anti-left rhetoric, as did Reagan, is because they really do fear and hate the left. The Democratic Party (is somewhat different), I think not because the corporate Democrats are nicer guys, it's because they depend on big cities for electoral support. And the big cities are simply more progressive. And there's a real left, like in New York, there's been some significant left victories electorally at the congressional level, at the state assembly level.
So, I think that level of formal democracy in the United States, while it's nowhere near what they pretended it to be, it is something and shouldn't be minimized.
And I think in places like Russia, certainly in China, you don't have it. It's not that there's nothing, but not as much as there is in the U.S. or a Canada or a Western Europe.
And it's an important distinction because people do need to fight to defend this, at the same time without exaggerating it or demonizing what goes on in a Russia or a China.
Aleksandr BuzgalinI agree we need more formal democracy. But, of course, it's better to have not formal but real democracy.
Paul JayThat would be, that would be better.
Aleksandr BuzgalinBut even some formal democracy is little bit, more formal democracy will be useful, of course. The problem is if we have a victory of so-called liberals in our country, we can have not more but less formal democracy. They have this experience in past. We have one of the main sources of propaganda, of liberal ideas and so-called opposition in our country, radio Echo of Moscow. And in this radio, I had a lot of debates. And very often the radio journalists, very well known, were saying that we need Pinochet for Russia. Because to defeat all this old Soviet traditions, we need the real strong power. And Pinochet was no dictator. He was good guy. He made the real protection of market. He made the real protection of private property. And so on and so forth. That's why if we have such person as Navalny, with his authoritarian, nationalistic slogans a few years ago, we can have even less formal democracy than we have now. We can have more dictatorship. This is a real threat.
As I said, when we had Yeltsin's government, formally very democratic, with big love from the United States, from Europe, and so on. It was in 1990s. But when parliament, not opposition, parliament, decided to make law against terrible, brutal privatization in favor of more social economic policy, it was blockaded. It was terrible attacks on demonstrators. A lot of people were beaten, arrested, and the demonstrations were much bigger. I participated in them. It was hundreds of thousands of people in the streets.
Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
1
